Film Reviews: The Barn Part II and Final Summer (Popcorn Frights Film Festival)

By: Joseph Perry (Twitter - Uphill Both Ways Podcast)

The Barn Part II

If you are in the mood for 1980s-style monstrous-killers mayhem, writer/director/editor Justin M. Seaman’s The Barn Part II — the sequel to his 2016 feature The Barn — has what you crave, in spades. With mind-boggling practical effects and a cast list reading like a Who’s Who of eighties fear-fare talent, The Barn Part II feels just like a film horror fans would pull off the rental shelves without prior knowledge about it at their local video store and, two hours later, be glad they took the chance. 

Seaman provides enough backstory that viewers won’t absolutely need to see The Barn first for things to make sense. This sequel finds Michelle (Lexi Dripps), the final-girl survivor of that first film, helping to lead a sorority fundraiser in a town that has banned Halloween courtesy of local spoilsport Sarah Barnhart (Linnea Quigley). Wouldn’t you know it, a troop of boy scouts unwittingly unleashed the trio of demonic killers — The Boogeyman, Hollow Jack, and the Candy Corn Scarecrow — from The Barn to once again wreak havoc, and this time they have brought along two more hellish companions — a pigman (Seinfeld’s Kramer was right . . . they exist!) and an especially cool-looking birdlike creature — to help them slaughter unsuspecting locals as they hunt down Michelle. 

To be honest, most of the acting on display in The Barn Part II won’t knock anybody’s socks off, but the fun, gore-laden special effects will. Special Effects Supervisor J. Ryan Hickey, Special Effects Artist Joe Castro, and Special Effects Makeup Artist Sydney Fulvi have done stellar work, so prepare yourself for gore galore and gruesome kills aplenty. You have been warned. 

With performances from Doug Bradley (Pinhead from the Hellraiser franchise), Troma Entertainment mastermind Lloyd Kaufman, Joe Bob Briggs, and the like, The Barn Part II is obviously happy to press the nostalgia buttons for many viewers. Seaman obviously knows his VHS-era fear fare, and he once again pays loving tribute to it. This is the type of horror movie you’ll want to invite friends over for — and you’ll all have a blast watching. Just maybe hold off on having a big meal beforehand.

Final Summer

Retro slashers run the gamut of quality, so it’s refreshing to report here that writer/director John Isberg’s Final Summer is one of the better ones, by far. It’s late summer 1991 at Camp Silverlake, which is closing for the season with some major problems — which are about to get far worse. There’s an urban legend around the camp involving murders, and suddenly a masked killer appears to breathe life into those campfire stories and to off as many camp counselors as possible, preferably with sharp metal tools but bare hands will work fine, too. 

Yes, Final Summer obviously follows some highly familiar beats, but it offers enough originality to make it rise well above the middle of the subgenre’s pack. The production values are all solid, and the cast members play their roles convincingly. Stars Thom Mathews (The Return of the Living Dead; Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives), Bishop Stevens (Revealer; Girl on the Third Floor; and former WCW and WWF wrestler), and Carl Bailey (Texas Chainsaw) are among the more familiar names in the cast, but everyone on the screen turns in solid work. Isberg plays everything straight here — as do the actors — giving the film a satisfyingly serious tone without stepping into either camp comedy or overly dark atmosphere. The film sets out to entertain in the manner of its inspirations, and it does a terrific job of it.

The Barn Part II and Final Summer screened as part of Popcorn Frights, which took place as a hybrid event, in person in Miami and Fort Lauderdale and with a virtual program online, from August 11–August 22, 2022. For more information, visit https://popcornfrights.com/.

Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/). He also writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), B&S About Movies (bandsaboutmovies.com), and Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom). 

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